


Strange Comfort

by Kierkegarden



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Drunkenness, M/M, Murder, This is still a Grindeldore ficlet, Torture, essentially prostitution, technically Gellert is underage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-02
Updated: 2018-03-02
Packaged: 2019-03-26 04:34:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13850202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kierkegarden/pseuds/Kierkegarden
Summary: After leaving Albus in the wreckage of Ariana's death and before planting the seeds of his revolution across Europe, Gellert needs a distraction. The memories, he finds, don't die so easily.Written for my Valentine's Day 2018 Ficlet Challenge





	Strange Comfort

**Author's Note:**

> For freedomisbeforethee on Tumblr
> 
> Prompt ‘Gellert Grindelwald and a person of your choosing (that is not Albus), who comforts him after he was forced to leave Albus’

He had waited until he was out of Britain, since he was surely being tailed. Gellert had been on his own when he was younger, he was no stranger to dancing between the beams of streetlights, finding shelter in some kind of place for whatever cost.

It would be another fortnight till he received monetary compensation from his contact in Milan. Revolutions don’t come cheap, and they don’t come easy, and they certainly do not come without sacrifice - Gellert had known this going in, and yet, pushed up against the lithe chest of a strange Dutch wizard, he felt himself steeped in a tempest of loss.

“What’s wrong with you?” the man squawked at him, off kilter from an excess of firewhiskey. His eyes were big and brown, hair as blond as Gellert’s own, and although his Frisian was only slightly above conversational, Gellert had still somehow charmed this man into a place to sleep. Only a fortnight more of this, he thought to himself - promised himself.

Gellert pulled himself closer, teeth sinking down on the skin of this man’s neck. “Nothing,” he whispered, “that you can’t handle.”

“What’s your name?” demanded the Dutchman, eyes narrowing, as if Gellert stirred within him some memory, “I know you told me you don’t have one and you were so pretty that I almost let it slide, but please, tell me your -”

“Too. Much. Talking,” Gellert pushed him down towards the bed, holding firm. Perhaps he should have waited around the bar to see if someone younger and greedier had shown up. This wasn’t the deal that Gellert had struck. He wanted simple, his body for a bed - no names, no words, no excess. No remembering why he was here.

“I think we have time to share a conversation.” The stranger’s lips curled into a smile as he flipped Gellert, pinning him to the bed, in an unprecedented show of strength, “Pretty stranger…”

Gellert felt anger rise up within him, hot and twisted. How dare  _anyone else_  try to play his equal? ““Flipendo,” he muttered, wandlessly releasing himself from the stranger’s grasp as the bed creaked like a mourner’s wail. The man flew towards the floor, making contact with a sickening crunch. Did he still want to play counselor? Gellert decided to indulge him.

“My name is Gellert Grindelwald,” Gellert stood over him, his unbuttoned shirt flying slightly asunder in the breeze from the open window, “it means little to the world now but in six months, you will hear it in the talk of every bar, every ministry. In a year, you will read it in the newspapers. And in five hundred years, it will still grace the pages of every history book.”

The Dutchman’s eyes widened in fear and Gellert flashed him a smile, now tainted by the madness that had been swelling within him.

“Do you still want to know what’s wrong?”

The crumpled form on the floor didn’t nod, but didn’t discourage him. He whimpered.

“I lost a very dear friend several days ago.” Gellert paced over him, drawing his wand from his pocket to flick it and whisper the immobilizing charm before the stranger could react.

“I-I’m sorry for your –.”

The Frisian was pathetic and drunk and it enraged Gellert more than anything that he was still talking. Gellert had his blueprint and his compass, but he had left his voice of reason behind in Godric’s Hollow. There was nothing stopping him from taking it all out on this stranger, letting him live his nightmare. He had asked, hadn’t he? Gellert smiled once again.

“Loss? I’m sorry for yours,” he flicked his wand towards the stranger, “Silencio! Crucio!”

Jolting up and down, as surges of pain played across his face, the stranger collapsed again and again like a limp doll on the floor, fighting the immobilization in his torture. His mouth opened in a silent scream as sweat coated his entire body. Gellert seated himself on the bed, watching with mild interest as the man writhed like a serpent with its head cut off.

“That should be enough,” Gellert lowered his wand, examining the man still immobilized before him, his breath worn and ragged, “If you don’t mind, I’m going to go to bed.”

The Dutchman’s face was frozen in terror as he watched Gellert pull himself into the bed, looking down at him on the floor, wand still in hand.

“One more thing,” Gellert added, hand coming up to hide a yawn as he rubbed his eyes with his free hand, “You know too much. I’m afraid I have to kill you now.”

He closed the blinds, watching the man’s face silently pleading, images of Albus dancing in his mind, Aberforth screaming as Ariana’s body hit the muddy banks.

“Avada Kedavra.”

The man’s face went lifeless before him and if it was that easy, Gellert thought, to kill a man in cold blood, he should have no trouble with the memories.


End file.
